


Toccata for Toy Trains

by feverbeats



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-06
Updated: 2010-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:25:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I first meet Mallorie Miles in Mombasa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toccata for Toy Trains

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what the fuck this is. I think it's a sort of jumble of ideas that didn't end up working for my bigbang.

You're waiting for a train.

The platform should be more crowded at this time of day—late afternoon—but you're the only person in sight besides me. I put my hand on the small of your back, up against your paisley shirt, faking the physical contact that comes so easily to you.

I think about you wearing suits and I think about you wearing dresses. I think about your accents, all of them.

You've made forgery a lifestyle: You grew up in a slum. You come from old money. You used to drink. You used to gamble. You're a lover. You're a fighter. You're a hooker. You're a bad man. You're a good woman. One of these things is true.

When we go home together, we share a bed. You're mine, but you're not my lover. I don't have lovers. You accept that, as you accept everything about me, breathing into my hair and calling me darling. _Everything you are is all right_. I wonder if you feel that way about yourself, and I find your expectations of my self-esteem unfair.

But I am a good man. I am a good man who has beaten people bloody with his bare hands.

We have killed each other a dozen times before. I have killed you in Callais, in Venice, in Chicago. You've killed me in someone's kitchen, in a church, in the middle of the woods. We've never done it awake, yet.

*

I first meet Mallorie Miles in Mombasa. She's hanging around in a gambling den pretending to have a poker addiction while she works on a job. Her father, an architect, has directed me there, telling me she's the best forger in the business, versatile as hell. I now you're better, but I need versatility, and you're in deep cover on a two-month job in Rome.

I introduce myself and she gives me a smile that looks like it's made just for me. My stomach flips without my permission.

"My father told me about you," she says playfully. I'm surprised to find that she's French.

I end up waiting in casinos and cheap hotels while she runs her job, but I don't mind waiting. I spend a lot of time hooked up to the PASIV, practicing for the next job. I wonder if you would tell me I'm dreaming too much, but already I know you would.

After two days, Mallorie is done with her job and she comes to find me, practically glowing with pleasure. "I'm glad you waited for me. It was a good job."

I'm willing to believe anything she says, as she stands in the doorway, sharp and vibrant. All I say is, "We should practice."

She's at least as good as you. She's more fluid, using the air and dreamspace to change, instead of the mirrors you're so fond of. She seems to shiver when she changes, or when she changes the dream around her.

After showing off her forgery of the mark's wife, a young woman with dark hair and olive skin, Mallorie shifts again, blurring and glittering in my eyes until she's wearing a well-cut dark suit. It takes me a moment to realize she's imitating me. She doesn't look like me, quite, but she doesn't look like herself, either. Her hair is short and dark, her features androgynous.

She smiles at me. "Well? Am I good enough for your job?" Her voice is only slightly deeper than it is in reality, resonant and heavily accented.

Of course she's good enough.

The next night, she takes me to a bar and introduces me to her boyfriend. _Mon amour_ , she calls him. He's young and smart and looks terribly uncomfortable in the bar. I can't understand what Mallorie sees in him until his eyes light up when he starts talking about extraction.

"I've run point on two jobs like this before," he tells me, over his rum and Coke. He talks with his hands, short, sharp bursts of motion. "I know this kind of guy."

There's something innately trustworthy about him, possibly the opposite of what is in Mallorie. She's striking, but she's not safe. Dominic, on the other hand, makes me feel more comfortable than I have since you left for your Rome job.

*

The first time you meet Mallorie, your face lights up and you kiss her hand to make her laugh. Watching the two of you is like watching two experienced fencers. All Dominic and I can do is stand back and be impressed.

That night in our hotel room, you ask me if you can take her to bed. She makes me uneasy, but you need things I can't give you, and I want to be her friend, so I say yes.

I think about the two of you together, fluid and sharp, and I _want_. I don't want your bodies, but I want to be there, not alone in a cold bed unable to sleep.

*

It takes Dom only two days to find out that you've been sleeping with Mallorie. I understand that kind of connection, the ability to know, without words, when something is wrong. I feel sorry for him.

I don't feel sorry for him for long. Mallorie laughs her always unexpected laugh and says, "Come to bed, Dom."

His face changes imperceptibly, something more subtle than I expected from him, something like hope, but more solid. "Mal," he says.

You stand by my side, smiling as if you have a secret.

That night, I excuse myself and lie awake while the three of you are together in the next room. I spend an hour cleaning my guns.

*

In the morning, you look tired, but happy. You're wearing paisley, and I think of that train platform and the train that would take you to Rome and leave me to make my way from Italy to Mombasa, starting this whole messy business.

"Eggs, Arthur?" you say.

"Don't tease him," Mallorie says a little sharply. She turns to me and her expression melts into a smile. "Tonight, _chéri_ , you should join us."

I fumble my words, saying that I can't, that I don't, but Dom holds up a hand and says, "Eames wants you to be there. And so do we. You don't have to . . . Look, just come. Please?"

The beds, I think, are probably big enough. You're beaming as if the whole thing was your idea. You'll have to fight Mallorie for it, I suspect, because she looks just as smug. "Okay," I say.

*

And that's the story of how I met Dominic and Mallorie. It's the story of how I didn't lose you and didn't even kill you. It's not the whole story, but it's the beginning.


End file.
